[beanie]

I agree with you and I say often that there really aren't many new customers. Where sites will gain marketshare in the future and ironically where affiliates will gain a better place in the market is with services to the players. See PokerStars as a perfect example of this.

I think what you are saying about Party holding fast is not a given on what is correct for the industry. That is what someone believes was correct. What they created was a dysfunctional system and their reaction was equally dysfunctional. I could have had a pow wow with my 2 daughters and we could have come up with 5 scenarios better than Party came up with. But hey, its their business to lose.

Fact is every online company has capitalized off of this misstep.

The discount people get from rakeback often keeps them break even or lower but they keep playing. Assuming that all rakeback players are not fish is an incorrect assumption and I can prove it by the fact that I front over 100k to players a month in compensation for rake that my subs don't get paid for until the following month.

Rakeback affiliates have the power to move millions of dollars in business in days. Affiliates in general are a personal relationship with the customer, any card room that misses this point will be a blip on the map long term. I remember a day where Paradise was a giant. Poker is a social games and for better or worse affiliates are the link to that poker room for customers. Some affiliates don't take this role seriously, those that do, do quite well.

What they are gaining in profits from this move they have lost in trust in the industry. It is this uncertainty that will haunt them for some time. When you make arrangements with affiliates and players and those arrangements are broken just because you can that is messed up. I could see if they tried to honor previous deals but this decision was done out of greed. It was not well thought out. Why would any affiliate send a new customer to Party Poker after this stunt?